Resolution Time!

Even if you swear you're not going to make a New Year's Resolution this year, you know you have that secret little inkling of something you'd like to change about yourself or your life. But you also know the statistics of how frequently NY resolutions fail, and how gyms are full for January and February, but empty again by March.

We all start the New Year with hope and anticipation and excitement, but it quickly fades. Why? Why can't we set out to do something to improve our lives, and follow through with certainty?

I believe it's because we focus too much on the end result, and not enough on the process of what it will take to get there. Take a common resolution to lose weight: I want to lose 50 pounds this year. This is certainly an attainable goal, and a year is a reasonable amount of time in which to do it. But how will I get there? I won't wake up every morning and say, "I'm going to lose 50 pounds today!" There needs to be a process in place...a system...that I can follow on a daily basis to achieve my goal.

It would make much more sense to have the resolution be: I will exercise 4 times per week, eat a salad for lunch every day, stop eating dessert, and stop eating after 7pm. That is a tangible, recordable, easy to follow system that will almost certainly lead to the desired result.

What about quitting smoking? You're certainly not going to wake up one day and quit smoking--if that was as easy as it sounds, no one would smoke anymore. You need a process that will result in success. Something like smoking one less cigarette per day, until you aren't smoking at all.

I believe we are also far too ambitious with our goals. We suddenly think we have to ability to make enormous changes to our lives, and can't understand why we lose our motivation. My advice is to only commit to changes that you can maintain for the rest of your life. If you can't imagine eating salad for lunch every day for the rest of your life, don't make that one of your changes--instead, commit to incorporating vegetables into every meal, or eating salad for lunch at least 3 times per week.  The changes you make should be long term and sustainable, rather than short term and dramatic.

There is rarely a time that you will be "finished" and can return to your old habits. Think of the self-improvement process as a lifelong journey that you can enjoy. It is much better to take 3 years to lose the 50 pounds, but keep it off for the rest of your life through long-term lifestyle changes, than to lose the 50 pounds in 3 months, but gain it right back again when you can't maintain the extreme changes you had to make in order to do it.

Most importantly, don't become jaded and bitter about past failures. Previous results are not an indicator of future success. Think of your unsuccessful attempts to improve yourself as practice, and remember that you know so much more about yourself now than you did when you started. You need to be your own biggest cheerleader, and constantly tell yourself that you are capable of change and deserve to be as happy as possible.

Good luck, and Happy New Year!